EU's Sweet Deal, Australia's Poison Pill

This proposed EU trade deal is a calculated betrayal of Australia's national interests.

It is not a genuine partnership. It is a one-sided ambush, dressed up with a few short-term trade sweeteners, while potentially locking Australia into decades of economic self-harm.

Have any of the incompetent fools supporting this deal actually thought through the consequences, the costs and the damage that could be inflicted upon Australia?

The most dangerous provisions are buried in Chapters 18 and 24.

These provisions commit Australia and the EU to implementing the Paris Climate Agreement and establish dispute-settlement arrangements that could ultimately result in trade sanctions for serious breaches of those commitments.

In other words, what politicians have sold to Australians as climate targets could become the subject of international trade disputes, with economic penalties hanging over our heads.

And make no mistake, the scales are grotesquely stacked against us.

For every Australian, there are roughly 16 Europeans.

For every dollar of economic output Australia produces, the EU produces approximately $11–12.

Yes, both sides could impose trade sanctions. But who has the greater economic firepower?

European sanctions have the potential to cripple Australian industries, destroy jobs and hammer our living standards. In contrast, our sanctions against the EU could amount to little more than a slap with a wet lettuce. They might barely flinch.

And the climate straitjacket is even worse.

Australia's Paris commitment requires a 62–70% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2035.

From around today's emissions levels, that means Australia still needs to achieve approximately 47–58% further reductions over the next nine years.

And when population growth is taken into account, the comparison with Europe becomes even more extraordinary.

Under the minimum 2035 Paris targets, Australia's per-capita emissions would have to fall by approximately 54% from today's levels.

The EU's corresponding minimum reduction is only around 46%.

Australia: 54%. European Union: 46%. Australians are being asked to make substantially greater sacrifices per person, while European politicians lecture the rest of the world about climate virtue.

And look at what's already happened in Europe. France has witnessed riots, arson and looting during protests sparked by rising fuel taxes and the cost of living. Across Europe, farmers have taken to the streets over soaring costs, taxes and burdensome environmental regulations.

If Europe's climate and environmental policies are contributing to such public anger and economic hardship, why would any sane country want to blindly follow Europe's example?

And don't forget that Europe's use of 1990 as its emissions baseline allows it to count the enormous reductions that followed the collapse and restructuring of inefficient communist-era industries in Eastern Europe.

This is nothing but a climate spiv's fantasy, and attempting to achieve it risks inflicting Depression-era hardship and poverty upon Australians. It is an act of economic self-harm, the equivalent of shooting ourselves not in the foot, but through the head.

Anyone that passed kindergarten maths should realise 47–58% further reductions over the next nine years is unachievable. 

Over the past 20 years despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the "energy transition" and "reducing emissions" the vast majority of Australia's net emissions reduction since 2005 has come from changes in land use and forestry (locking up productive farmland and allowing to be overrun with feral pests) while the madness of the COVID shutdowns temporarily suppressed emissions.

As the graph below demonstrates, the reductions outside the land-use sector have been negligible

And now we are expected to accelerate emissions reductions to a pace never before achieved in modern Australian history.

Even if we closed down every coal- and gas-fired power station and carpeted the countryside with solar panels and our oceans with wind turbines, that alone would not deliver the entire reduction required.

Where will the remaining cuts come from? Our beef, dairy and sheep industries Our transport and shipping industries? Our coal and gas exports? What's left of Australian manufacturing?

The pressure to meet these targets could force enormous costs onto all these industries, devastating regional Australia and threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Australians.

And consider the complete absurdity of the supposed benefits for Australian beef.

What is the point of celebrating better access for Australian beef to European markets if, in pursuit of the Paris targets, Australian farmers are subsequently forced to reduce cattle herds to cut methane emissions?

What good is improved market access if climate policies make it increasingly expensive to produce the very goods we are supposed to export?

It's madness.

Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars in precious, limited investment capital risk being diverted away from productive industries into subsidised renewable energy projects and white elephants such as Snowy 2.0.

Our natural environment faces further disruption from thousands of kilometres of new transmission lines cutting through bushland and enormous offshore wind developments threatening to industrialise parts of our coastline.

All in pursuit of an ideological obsession that risks making Australians poorer and reducing our living standards.

And who benefits?

The subsidy-dependent renewable energy developers, the climate grifters and spivs lining their pockets, and foreign manufacturers supplying the equipment, particularly Communist China.

The proposed EU trade agreement is the ultimate bait-and-switch.

A few short-term sweeteners in exchange for potentially decades of economic pain. It is like the EU placing a piece of cheese in a mousetrap. We are supposed to celebrate improved market access while accepting an agreement that could strengthen external enforcement of climate obligations over Australia's economy.

We should be negotiating trade agreements that open markets, improve prosperity and strengthen Australian industries, not agreements that provide another means of applying international pressure to our domestic energy, agricultural and industrial policies.

And don't expect the ABC to give these provisions the scrutiny they deserve, so Australians can at least have an informed debate before the country is committed.

The fact that elements of the Liberal Party are prepared to cross the floor and vote with Labor to support this agreement demonstrates that, despite Angus Taylor, the Liberal Party still hasn't learned its lesson.

There are clearly still elements within the Liberal Party who are prepared to undermine their own leader, just as they did with Tony Abbott.

The party cannot credibly claim to oppose destructive climate policies while supporting an international trade agreement that could reinforce them.

The EU trade deal offers a few short-term economic sweeteners in exchange for kowtowing to the globalist Paris agenda and risking massive, long-term economic self-harm.

Anyone prepared to sign away Australia's national interests by accepting these punitive provisions is, in my view, betraying this country.

Anyone who knowingly supports a trade agreement that exposes Australian industries to international sanctions over these climate obligations is a traitor to Australia's national interests.

That's why we need to get behind One Nation.

They are our last hope.

“No nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest.”
― George Washington